Estate Law

07/17/2018

If you would like to take advantage of the new lifetime gift tax exemption limit before it reverts to a lesser amount in a few years, you have many options for doing so.

The recently passed tax reform law doubled the lifetime gift tax exemption from previous levels. However, the exemption is scheduled to revert to the previous level in a few years. That means if you want to take advantage of the increased limit, then you need to act quickly.

You can create an LLC that holds stock or other investments and gift your family members’ interests in the LLC. That allows you to control the investments, while still gifting to your family for their use later.

If you own a company, you can create a trust and gift stock in the company to that trust for your family's benefit.

It is a great time to fully fund any special needs trusts your relatives have.

Now is a great time to create and fund trusts that your family can benefit from later. If you have enough money, you can even create a dynasty trust that will supplement your family wealth for generations to come. An estate attorney can help you determine the best trust for your family.

You can help younger family members purchase their first homes.

Consider funding retirement options for younger family members, such as by purchasing annuities for them.

05/01/2018

Should you be notified that you are the potential beneficiary of someone's estate, then what happens next depends on state laws.

When a will is filed in probate court, one of the first things normally required is to notify everyone who is named in the will or who may potentially benefit from the will. Sometimes, that can be many people, as is the case of the recently deceased actor John Mahoney.

His estate is worth approximately $5 million and there are 38 people who could be beneficiaries. Most of the time, the number of people notified is likely to be far less. If you are notified that you could potentially benefit from a will, you need to know what to expect from the probate process. This is especially true, if it is a large estate.

State laws vary greatly about how the probate process is conducted. Your first question might be what you can expect to receive from the estate. However, that can take a long time to sort out. In some states, you can ask the probate court for a copy of the will that was filed. This might at least give you a general idea.

However, in other states, it is left to the discretion of the appointed executor (personal representative) whether to let people see the will. However, what the will says you should inherit, might not be what you actually receive. Other people and creditors might file claims against the estate.

What is the best thing to do if you are a potential beneficiary of a wealthy estate? Hire an estate attorney who can help you with the process in the state where the probate court is located.

03/30/2018

Estate litigation occurs for a variety of reasons. However, experts can often predict what types of litigation will become more popular.

At the heart of most estate litigation cases is some sort of family grievance. There are other reasons for litigating over an estate. However, family issues are by far the biggest source of conflicts. That is a timeless principle that has been true since the very beginning of estate law and it is likely to always be true.

However, the contours of how the litigation proceeds changes over time. It is useful to try and anticipate how potential battles will look. Private Wealth recently predicted some trends we may see, when it comes to estate litigation in 2018.

First, it is likely that more estate litigation cases will be filed. Americans are getting older and many are increasingly sitting on larger and larger piles of wealth that people will want to fight over.

The expected increase in litigation has led to estate planners looking for ways to avoid it. One popular way is to include mandatory arbitration clauses in wills and trusts. It is expected that litigation over the enforceability of those clauses will increase.

Another way to deal with the increase in estate litigation has been to use more no-contest clauses and to widen their scopes in states where this is permitted. (Not in Florida) That will also likely be the source of increased litigation, as plaintiffs seek to avoid the clauses.

The rules of the Uniform Trust Code are likely to be another source of disputes, as courts in states that have recently adopted a version of it, will need to determine what is allowed and what is not allowed.

03/16/2018

One of the long-standing principles of estate law is that someone who kills another person cannot receive an inheritance from the person killed. A new court ruling shows how far that principle can go.

A long-standing trope in melodramas, is for the heir of a wealthy person in a rush to receive an inheritance, to kill the wealthy person. The trope is based on reality, since such cases have been known to happen. However, in the real world, the murderer rarely gets away with it and does not receive the expected inheritance.

This is because so-called slayer statutes prevent a murderer from receiving an inheritance from the person they murdered. This principle has been part of estate law for a long time.

In this case, an Illinois woman stabbed her sleeping husband and then hit him with a baseball bat killing him. She admitted to doing this but was found not guilty by reason of insanity. She was denied payments from her husband's pension fund and argued that because she was not guilty, she was still entitled to his pension under federal pension law. However, the court found otherwise and declared that federal law did not override the state's slayer statute. Other federal courts have found similarly in previous cases, but the Supreme Court has never weighed in on the subject.

There are obviously many reasons why someone should not consider becoming a murderer for an inheritance. However, if the moral reasons are not enough, people should be aware that they will not receive the inheritance because of state laws.

02/06/2018

Estate law in the U.S. allows people to leave their wealth to whomever they want with very few restrictions. In some other countries, people have very few choices on the inheritance of wealth.

When people go to an estate planning attorney in the U.S., they will learn that there are very few legal restrictions regarding the distribution of their wealth after they pass away.

People are required to make sure their spouses and minor children are taken care of, so they cannot simply be disinherited. However, if people want to, they can disinherit their adult children, their grandchildren or anyone who is not their spouse or minor child.

This is because estate law in the U.S. has been developed to give as much freedom to people as possible in deciding who should receive an inheritance from them.

The son claims his own son is attempting to cheat him out of his proper share of her legacy.

The son’s claim is that the grandson tricked him into giving up control of Caged Bird Legacy and now the grandson is taking assets out of the of the foundation for his own use, without giving his father his fair share.

It is too soon to know whether the son or the grandson is in the right or wrong in this case.

It is another example of a fight over a valuable estate and why it is sometimes better not to leave family members in charge.

Independent and professional oversight is well worth the cost when it comes to valuable estate assets.

04/05/2017

A Colorado town that learned it was home to a frozen Norwegian grandfather, created a festival to celebrate him.

Bredo Morstoel is not your average dead body. For many years, he was frozen in liquid nitrogen in California. However, in 1993 his wife and son moved to the town of Nederland in Colorado, ostensibly to open a cryonic facility.

Unbeknownst to the town, they brought Morstoel's body with them.

This was discovered when the wife went into the town to fight an eviction. While his wife and a grandson have since been deported on visa violations, they still pay a caretaker to haul 2,400 pounds of dry ice every month to preserve Morstoel's frozen body.

03/31/2017

A federal law passed late last year, designed to make it easier for families to recover art stolen by the Nazis, is getting its first test in a New York court.

While the Nazis were plundering Europe, one of the many things they did was to steal artwork from the owners and keep it for themselves. Under international law, artwork is supposed to be returned to the original owners or their heirs.

Since the Nazis were defeated a long time ago, many people might think that has been done by now. They would be wrong in many cases.

The current holders of many contested works have successfully defended themselves against the heirs for technical reasons, such as the statute of limitations. To address this problem, last year the U.S. Congress passed the Holocaust Expropriated Art Recovery Act, known as the HEAR Act.

The case is over two drawings by Egon Schiele that were once owned by Fritz Grunbaum. The Nazis took Grunbaum's artwork from his home in Vienna in 1938 and sent him to a concentration camp where he died.

His heirs claim the Nazis stole the artwork.

However, that has been disputed by dealers, current owners and museums, who claim the Nazis only inventoried the works. They also claim that Grunbaum's sister-in-law sold some of the works, including the two drawings in the current dispute, to a dealer in the 1950s.

Grunbaum's heirs have previously lost in court trying to recover this artwork.

They claim they have lost for the very technical reasons the HEAR Act was designed to prevent.

Since this is the first time the Act will be used in court, how the court uses the Act will be closely monitored.

03/30/2017

Alzheimer's is so expensive to treat, that it presents a very real threat to both Medicaid and Medicare.

The mostly costly disease to treat is Alzheimer's. A total of one out of every five dollars spent by Medicaid and Medicare is currently used to treat the disease.

If the costs are not brought down dramatically, the future of both programs could be in jeopardy. Why? Americans are living longer and longer, which means that more people are or will be in need of Alzheimer's treatment.

Both programs are already extremely expensive and face financial difficulties in the future. With their present funding, they will not be able to afford a large increase in Alzheimer's diagnoses and treatments.

What does this mean?

Research into preventing and curing the disease is more important than ever. The development of new less expensive treatment methods would also be helpful.

This is another of the many ways that an aging population could threaten the country's current institutions and practices, unless action is taken. Our programs were not designed with a substantial increase in longevity in mind.

Other issues include paying for nursing home care, the health of the Social Security system, the availability of home health aides and a cultural change brought on by people having to wait longer to receive their inheritances.